Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: BD WHITE CHRISTMAS on 11/2

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 08-23-2010, 12:56 PM:

THe Digital Bits reported today, WHITE CHRISTMAS will be released on November 2nd on Blu-Ray and a DVD gift set. I do not care about the DVD but I will definitely buy the BD and hope it will be made from the original VistaVision negative after it was fully restored. I saw the movie during it's first run at the King Theatre in downtown Honolulu in 1954 and still recall how vibrant the regular VistaVision 35mm print looked. I have been admiring the VistaVision picture quality of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS from a DVD on my 1080P HD set and if VV van look that good from that video format, it should be spectacular in Blu-Ray. I also remember how good the DVD of WHITE CHRISTMAS looked on my old standard definition television set.

As many of you know, this was the very first movie released in VistaVision by Paramount and the movie was designed for the process with it's beautiful photography, set decoration and costume design. I do not think it was but was WHITE CHRISTMAS ever released to theatres in four track mag?

-Claude

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 08-23-2010, 01:13 PM:

I've only ever heard it being released in Perspecta sound. We don't have a BD player yet (nor HD tv, yeah, we're in the stone age [Embarrassed]

), but I imagine a good HD transfer of this movie would be spectacular.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 08-23-2010, 02:06 PM:

We recently bought a DVD of this, watched it, and returned it. The transfer was awful. There were what appeared to be color registration problems all over the place and it was just about impossible to watch. Explaining the problem to the young ladies at Best Buy was fun, but eventually they did give us our money back.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 08-23-2010, 03:03 PM:

Mark,

As I ha mentioned in my thread, the DVD I have of WHITE CHRISTMAS is fine and it played back beautifully on my standard definition set. My copy is the original release and not the special edition Paramount Home Video released about three years ago. You probably had a defective copy. yes, it is a lot of fun getting Best Buy'to provide hassle free customer service when you need to return something. If whenever possible, I like to do business at Costco because they are very good about handling defective product return. THe only problem with Costco is their very limited inventory especially Blu Ray discs.

-Claaude

Posted by Victor Liorentas (Member # 5272) on 08-23-2010, 08:54 PM:

I have run White Christmas many times from a 60s era IB Tech print which showed some odd color issues and very low resolution.
More recently i ran a much newer Eastman print that was printed too dark and otherwise had the same issues!
I find it hard to believe it looked this bad when it was new but i would like to see the Blu-ray!

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 08-23-2010, 10:00 PM:

Victor,

I was fortunate to have seen almost all of the classic films from Hollywood and Japan in a theatre from the the time I was able to appreciate them from about 1947. I witnessed the introduction of Natural Vision (Dual Projection) 3-D, CinemaScope, TODD AO and saw every three strip Cinerama film including WINDJAMMER which was a Cinemiracle film but adapted to the Cinerama format. I saw almost every VistaVision film released by Paramount and other studios such as NORTH BY NORTHWEST (MGM) all during their first run in a theatre and everyone one of them were breathtaking with excellent print quality and projection. During that time, all theatres were single screen venues with very large screens and movies photographed in VistaVision looked awesome because of the larger size negative used in production. 70mm reduction prints in 35mm also looked great on these screens such as OKLAHOMA, EXODUS, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and a few others because Honolulu did not present them in the large format during their first run. I saw OKLAHOMA and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA here in Honolulu many times in 70mm during revival showings.

I was puzzled why the inhibition reprints of WHITE CHRISTMAS prints differs from the way it first looked in 1954 if the lab used the same dye transfer time codes for each of the three separation printing elements.

-Claude

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 08-23-2010, 10:14 PM:

There was talk on another forum that being the first VV film to get the dye transfer treatment, the printing matrices were not as good as they could have been. The later IB printing is supposed to be sharper, having benefitted in the intervening years from experience in producing better matrices from the VV negatives.

So I'm surprised to read that the 60s era print looked so bad, Victor. I've seen an original 1954 IB print and thought it looked good, but apart from a few scenes, not necessarily better than other IB prints of that era.

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 08-23-2010, 10:17 PM:

The problem was that at first, VistaVision worked in theory, but not in practice. Technicolor was still developing a new mordant at the time that kept the dyes from bleeding (causing softness). The original mordant used since the late '20s was Chitosan, which was extracted from sea shells. The wide-screen era mordant was a synthetic compound.

The prints I've run of WHITE CHRISTMAS, THREE RING CIRCUS (2 prints), and STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND all have these softness issues. The post-1954 VV prints, such as ARTISTS AND MODELS, HIGH SOCIETY and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS are very good by comparison. By THE GEISHA BOY, they really had it down good.

WHITE CHRISTMAS was never a 4-track show, but makes good use of Perspecta. By comparison, the only mag/VV show was the Colonial Williamburg exhibit, THE STORY OF A PATRIOT.

The AR of the first few VV titles was 1.66-1. Thereafter, Paramount's VV titles are wisely composed for the narrowest ratio (2-1).

Also, this may be of interest to some of you. This was published in most VV pressbooks:

Dramatize Your VistaVision Showings...Here's How

In order to do full justice to your presentation of VistaVision productions, it is suggested that the more your house lights are down, the better and more impressive will your screen look. The maximum effect will be achieved if you extinguish every single light which the law permits. Any lights which have to stay on should be pulled down as much as the law allows.

Another means of adding immeasurably to the impressiveness of VistaVision is in the showmanship handling of shorts and newsreel suggested by the procedure followed at the New York Paramount. Shorts and newsreel were exhibited on the smallest possible screen with as many house lights as practical way up. Then, as the titled of the feature came on, the masking was killed in such a way that the audience could see the screen growing to full size. The house lights which were on for the shorts and newsreel were held through the opening titles of the feature and dimmed down as far as possible when the titles were over.

If you follow this procedure, every viewer cannot help but be impressed not only by the increased size of the screen but by the tremendous additional clarity, brilliance and beauty of presentation afforded by VistaVision.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 08-24-2010, 06:35 AM:

Claude -

My DVD was of the recent special edition - which we thought would be pretty special. It wasn't. I don't think it was a defective disk. It looked like a really sharp picture of a really bad transfer.

Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 09-06-2010, 02:03 PM:

Admittedly off topic, but to my knowledge the final batch of 16mm prints of White Christmas were a run of SP's struck around 1980 and the sharpness and sound quality is really excellent on the prints I've seen. Mine has even held its color well with only a very minor amount of fade.

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 11-02-2010, 04:14 PM:

Has anyone gotten their BD today? I'm very curious to learn how it looks.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 11-03-2010, 12:37 PM:

Hillary,

I skipped through the BD of WHITE CHRISTMAS last night and was extremely happy with the presentation. I still have fond memories when I first saw the movie in VistaVision at the King Theatre in Honolulu for the first time in 1954 during it's initial release. It was a gorgeous dye transfer presentation and until that time, I had never seen Technicolor look that good with a striking image that was extremely sharp with no trace of film grain and the color was very brilliant! That is exactly the way the new Blu-Ray disc look.

The Blu-Ray of White Christmas has the look and feel of the original VistaVision presentation and it seem the BD was mastered from the original three strip dye transfer elements and seeing WHITE CHRISTMAS looking almost the way it originally was presented in the theatres brings back so many fond memories of that time when I was very young.

-Claude

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 11-03-2010, 12:57 PM:

Thank you Claude, for that glowing (in Technicolor!) review.

So can I assume those who were disappointed with the DVD will be pleased with this new disc? Sounds like we might just have to get a BD player soon...

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 11-03-2010, 02:33 PM:

Hillary,
I hope you get a BD player very soon and a HD set. You do not know what you are missing until you see your favorite films in HD from a Blu-Ray disc.

By the way, I forgot to mention anything about the sound on the WHITE CHRISTMAS BD. Although the disc state the sound is in DTS Master Audio it sounds very much like the original monaural track and that was fine with me.

By the way, THE SOUND OF MUSIC and BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI also look great in Blu-Ray. Never had a a chance to play my THE PACIFIC set yet but I know how it looks because I already watched Part One in BD when Blockbuster had a free rental of it a couple of months ago and the like BAND OF BROTHERS, the picture and sound quality is superb.

-Claude

Posted by Vern Dias (Member # 5241) on 11-03-2010, 10:49 PM:

I watched the first 30 minutes of this today, and other that the fact that the VistaVision opening logo had very bad registration problems in the center of the image and there was a scene or two with registration errors when Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye are in the dressing room before leaving to go see the Haynes Sisters, it looks very good. I can't believe the extent of the registration error on the VistaVision logo, though.... Sloppy work....

Vern

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-03-2010, 11:08 PM:

I don't think White Christmas looked quite as good as subsequent VV films shot with the Mitchell or Technicolor cameras did. The early adapted Stein 2 color cameras they used were quite old and not very high quality. I have one sitting here on my shelf. Adapted Leica still camera lenses were used on all the VV cameras from the start up to the end of VV filming. If you compare something like "Vertigo" or "North By Northwest" to "White Christmas" there is a huge difference in picture quality.

Mark

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 11-04-2010, 05:12 AM:

Vern,

I just watched WHITE CHRISTMAS toniGht on BD and I did notice the registration problem with the letter V for Vision on the VistaVision logo. While most of the film looked perfectly color corrected, I had noticed many scenes that had a over all blue shift that wanted me to view the scenes with a ten point yellow color correction filter. I do not think anyone was deliberately trying to be sloppy when they mastered the movie for Blu-Ray. I think they did their best with the elements they had to work with and the budget. Unlike Warners and Fox, Paramount Home Video is not known to release many of their classic films for the home video market but I am grateful they made the effort to release WHITE CHRISTMAS on Blu-Ray and hope they release other VistaVision films like THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

-Claude

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 11-04-2010, 07:42 AM:

Does the VistaVision logo suffer from color fringing, or could it be from the matting process for the superimposition? I've seen an original Technicolor print, and there is a bit of weaving of the elements during that. But if you guys are seeing color fringes, then this is something different again.

Jack makes a good point that "White Christmas" didn't fully benefit from the larger negative due to Technicolor not having all the bugs worked out of the system. The later VV movies do tend to look better overall. Maybe it's just legend, but I would have thought the Leica lenses would have provided suitably sharp images on the o-neg. Is that a myth?

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 11-04-2010, 01:06 PM:

Hillary,

Except for the color fringing on the VistaVision logo and the blue color shifts during parts of the movie, I thought Paramount did a very fine job with the BD of WHITE CHRISTMAS. I Have bought the movie on VHS, Laserdisc and DVD before and this is the best it had ever looked.

WHITE CHRISTMAS on Blu-Ray is a bargain at $20.00 and you can get it at Costco for a dollar less and this is a title that will eventually drop in price to about $10.00 if you are willing to wait until it does.

-Claude

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 11-04-2010, 02:13 PM:

There was a blue color shift around people's eyes specifically was VERY distracting in the DVD - which is what made me return it. Are you saying that's still there?

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 11-04-2010, 06:07 PM:

Mark,

The blue shift scenes is not limited to the eyes but the entire picture and occurs early in the movie before the story shifts to it's Vermont setting at the Inn. The color is not that bad that make me want to return my BD and claim it was unacceptable for technical reasons. The picture on the BD is the best I had seen of the movie on home video and I am more than happy with it. The scenes with the blue shift occurs when Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye are entertaining their fellow soldiers on the battle field and the scenes leading up to the train ride to Vermont. The color look like a photographic print that requires at least a 10Y filter to get rid of the blue shift .

-Claude

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 11-04-2010, 06:32 PM:

WOW! [Eek!]

If these frame grabs are any indication this disc would be high on my list.

The reds seem brighter than in the IB print I saw, but it really does look pretty.

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 11-04-2010, 07:43 PM:

Mark is correct that the Stein cameras didn't have as great pin registration as the Mitchell VV cameras, but the softness that was in the early VV prints was definitely a case of the modant Technicolor was using. The difference between the 1954 prints of WHITE CHRISTMAS and the circa 1960 re-issue is huge. From about mid-1955 on, the color prints looked great. Around that same time, they'd changed their mordant to a synthetic.

Conversely, Technicolor apparently farmed out the B&W VistaVision work in the '50s to another lab (I don't know who, although it was definitely not Pathe), and the US, B&W VV prints of that era (ROSE TATTOO, KING CREOLE) looked worse than 4-perf shows from around the same time. Recent re-strikes that went back to the 8-perf negs look much better.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 11-04-2010, 08:56 PM:

How hard would it have been to fix the blue shift in those scenes though? That's a real shame.

Posted by Vern Dias (Member # 5241) on 11-07-2010, 08:42 AM:

Hillary,

Definite color misregistration, the colors in the center V in VistaVision are misregistered horizontally by at least an inch on my 5' x 10' projected image. As you move out to the edges of the image, the amount of misregistration decreased. I was viewing it at the maximum reccomended 2:1 AR.

Vern

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 11-08-2010, 07:56 AM:

Thanks Vern for that info. That is disappointing, almost like some kind of optically-induced misregistration.

Pity they don't use the process Warners does with color seps.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-08-2010, 10:25 AM:

quote: Jack Theakston
Mark is correct that the Stein cameras didn't have as great pin registration as the Mitchell VV cameras

Actually even the Mitchell VV cameras suffered slight steadiness problems as well. They still only used two reg pins at the frame line and the long distance of filum hanging back from the pins to the other end of the aperature was not regestered or supported at all. Subsequent modification to three pin registration of the Mitchell movements was not done until Lucasfilm got ahold of the cameras and movements. Double and triple exposure tests showed that for the precise optical work they had to do the third pin had to be added andit was done at mid frame, or 4 perfs over fomr the twin pins.

I also own Stein camera #2 and it at some point in it's life had a third reg pin added... but probably by the camera Department at 20th Century Fox since thats where the camera was before I owned it. I suspect it was modified and used on effects for Fantastic Voyage or some other similar effects film of the 60's.

Mark

Posted by Jack Theakston (Member # 4484) on 11-24-2010, 04:16 PM:

Cool. Would love to see pictures of that rig.

Posted by Hillary Charles (Member # 769) on 12-01-2010, 07:21 AM:

What Jack said. I'd love to see a pic of that camera, Mark. [Cool]